


the monster devouring the winchesters’ hearts is love

by Thewordlover



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Pre-Series, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2195373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewordlover/pseuds/Thewordlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your love for him burns in your belly, mixed up with rage and fear and longing. You get drunk more often, but never sloppy on the job. No, you push to be perfect, to be enough for Dad. You try to fill the gap Sam left in your dad’s heart, and realize you’ve been digging through your own, leaving torn sinew and thin blood everywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the monster devouring the winchesters’ hearts is love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linara/gifts).



> I will admit this story was sitting in my files, waiting for completion, but I realized this might be right up your ally. So, happy birthday, bro! Hope it was a lot less angsty than this (you can't be surprised).

You’re four years old and your big brother is your guardian, your best friend, his sturdy hands helping you build with Legos, his warm back pressed against yours in the car, his voice calming when the darkness outside the motel walls threatens to swallow you.  
Dad’s gone again tonight, leaving the room quiet save for the dripping sink. Dean makes mac and cheese and lets you watch PBS past your bed time, then he tucks you in and reads you another chapter of James and the Giant Peach, turns out the lights. You lay in bed, still and silent against Mr. Muffle the teddy bear, as a November storm rolls in. Sleep is distant, and your head is foggy and cold.  
“Dean,” you whisper around midnight. The bed next to yours is full of rustling, and then his eyes glint in the dark.  
“Sammy, what’s wrong?”  “I can’t sleep.”  
“Do you want another story?”  
“I want Dad,” you say, petulantly. “When will he be home?”  
“Soon, Sammy, real soon.”  
“I want him here now.”  
He reaches out and grabs your hand, the one flung out towards the chasm of worn carpet below. It is covered by his warm, strong palm, and you scoot over to make room for your brother, who slips in beside you. You fall asleep like that, and in the morning pale sunlight makes Dean’s light hair shines next to yours on the pillow. Dad’s paper white face twitches in the other bed, a hastily set bandage on his forearm bled through.

—

Your hands are shaking, your body tense and useless as the door slams behind Sam. His footsteps quickly disappear into the gathering night. Your attempts at mediation have failed, and your clenched teeth are on the edge of cracking.  
Dad wavers between lunging and holding stock still, his lungs taking up all the air in the room.  
“Dad-“ He stares into your eyes, his blurry and practically unseeing. Then all at once your body unlocks, and you rush past him through the motel door.  
A wash of dark brown hair as a taxi drives away. You run after it, until a stitch engulfs your torso and you dry heave in the ditch on the side of the country road out here in Idaho. Bile rises slowly, with a shaking that starts in your bones.  
Sammy.  
You wander, restless, crazed, until it’s pitch dark. Back in the room, Dad is getting shitfaced and gripping his hands into fists. You want to touch his back, warm him up some dinner, do something, but your throat is so tight with unshed tears you can barely breathe, let alone speak.  
“Sam,” he mutters. “Sam…”  
He doesn’t say, At least you’re still here. You think you know it, but you’re never sure enough to let that be a comfort to either of you.  
The next morning you head out to the local morgue together, instant coffee from the motel office steaming up the windshield. The hunt goes on. Dad doesn’t say Sam’s name for weeks, and the hole burning up the fucking empty backseat of the Impala is never put out. It smolders there and in your heart. You weren’t enough to keep him. He’s a stubborn ass, couldn’t being with family be enough? How could it not be? What did you do to let him go? Your love for him burns in your belly, mixed up with rage and fear and longing. You get drunk more often, but never sloppy on the job. No, you push to be perfect, to be enough for Dad. You try to fill the gap Sam left in your dad’s heart, and realize you’ve been digging through your own, leaving torn sinew and thin blood everywhere.

—

The first few days in motel beds are both foreign and familiar, like an out of focus photograph. Dean watches old movies and nods off with a beer in hand. You read or watch with him, order in pizza or Chinese, go out to gas station convenience stores. It scares you, how fast it all comes back- the scratchy sheets and disturbing stains on carpets is, was, and always will be as familiar as brushing your teeth. It was almost possible to block it out at Stanford. Jessica insisted on keeping a clean apartment. You did the dishes together and listened to the student radio station. You had the apple pie dream. Which shattered, as all dreams do, leaving memories that squirm in your guilty gut.  
Dean looks over at you tonight, his eyes shifty and dark. You look up, hold his gaze for a moment, try to placate, reassure with a slight nod and heavy swallow. Something in your stomach twists on the lie. How many thousands of times has ‘I’m fine” passed between you two, and exactly zero times was it the truth. You fall into a fitful sleep, and dream of dancing around your kitchen with Jessica to the sounds of early 2000s pop-rock.  
In the morning, your pillow is soaked and Dean has left a donut on the nightstand with a newspaper and a circled article. Time to hit the road, another sensation that soaked into your bones when you were nonverbal, something you had tried to forget, and now you’re here again, somewhere you promised yourself you’d never be. The road pulls you along, a river of dusty asphalt and aching loneliness, buoyed by the heartbeat of the driver, your brother, who never stopped being the knife in your gut and the stitches in your wound, both twirling along, cold and certain.  
Anyway, it’s not like you have a choice. You and Dean, you have work to do.

—

The first night in Mike Guenther’s guest room Dean won’t let go of you, and so you settle in with your little boy in the foreign bed, baby Sammy nestled in between. You don’t sleep, just lay there and listen carefully to the heartbeats of your sons. Something evil got Mary, you know it, and you will never see her sunshine smile or feel her arms around you again. You cannot let the same fate befall your innocent sons. You will find the evil son of a bitch that got Mary and kill it. But now, the grief and fear make you feel like you’re drowning, but no tears fall. It is all tied up in your chest and throat, making it near-impossible to breath, to think. The darkness is a thick cloak full of whispers on the wind, and while Dean is a mess, exhaustion won over him hours ago. As the night tips towards sunrise, you twist your wedding ring, worrying at the skin. You hold Sammy to your cold body, cup Dean’s sweaty palm. You won’t let go of them, not even for a second, ever again. You will block any threats against them by sheer force of will. In the gray dawn, you can barely raise your head against the exhaustion and grief that keeps you locked in bed with the boys.

—

Once upon a time, a happy family lived in Lawrence, Kansas. One night the mother, heart full of dangerous secrets, died, and from then on, the boys were nomads, clutching at each other with a desperation that was, as all things are, ultimately useless. But still, they tried, tried so hard sometimes death itself was reversed. The father left them for good some years later, made a deal to save his son, let himself be damned. The brothers continued on, criss-crossing the country, fighting evil, and refusing to ever let go. Their love choked them, buoyed them, and gave them purpose. In the end, perhaps it was better than the alternate.


End file.
